Updating Fedora and Enterprise Linux PUP and RHN

New versions of Fedora are released every few months. In the meantime, new updates are continually being prepared for particular software packages. These are posted as updates you can download from software repositories and install on your system. These include new versions of applications, servers, and even the kernel. Such updates may range from single software packages to whole components—for instance, all the core, application, and development packages issued when a new release of GNOME, KDE, or X11 is made available.

TIP If you are installing or updating several months after the official Fedora release, it may be easier to use a Fedora Re-Spin disk. This is disk with the latest updates. This way you avoid having to download numerous updates to the original packages from online repositories. Fedora Re-Spins are issued every three months by the Fedora Unity project. Fedora Re-Spins disks can be downloaded using BitTorrent from torrents.fedoraunity.org.

Updating your Linux system has become a very simple procedure, using the automatic update tools. For Fedora, you can update your system by accessing software repositories supporting the Yum (Yellowdog Updater, Modified) update methods. Yum uses RPM headers to determine which packages need to be updated. You can find out more about Yum, including a listing of Yum repositories, at linux.duke.edu/projects/yum.

To update your packages, you now use the Package Updater Program (PUP). PUP is a graphical update interface for Yum, which now performs all updates. With PUP you no longer have to update using a yum update command entered in a terminal window.

PUP makes use of the PUP applet on your GNOME panel, which will automatically check for updates whenever you log in. If updates are detected, PUP will flash its icon on the panel and display a message telling you that updates are available and how many there are. Click the PUP button to start PUP. You can also select PUP manually from its Software Updater entry in the Applications | System Tools menu.

All needed updates will be selected automatically when PUP starts up. The check boxes for each entry let you deselect any particular packages you may not want to update. Click the Apply button to start updating. Dependencies will be checked first. Then the packages will be downloaded from their appropriate repository. Once downloaded, the packages are updated.

TIP To update to a new Fedora release, you can download Fedora CD/DVD-ROM ISO images from download.fedora.redhat.com/download or from one of the Fedora download mirrors, fedoraproject.org/Download/mirrors.html. You can then burn the ISO image and update from that install CD/DVD. Fedora ISO images can also be downloaded using the BitTorrent service, torrent.fedoraproject.org. BitTorrent provides a very fast method for downloading ISO images.